Posts Tagged → yuanwu

years of hunger beneath gojo bridge


 

A master’s

handiwork cannot

be measured but still priests wag

their tongues explaining the “Way” and

babbling about “Zen.” This old monk has

never cared for false piety and my

nose wrinkles at the dark smell

of incense before the

Buddha.

 

Crazy Cloud

speaks of Daito’s unsurpassed

brilliance but the clatter of royal carriages

about the temple gates drowns him out and no

one listens to tales of the Patriarch’s long

years of hunger and homelessness

beneath Gojo

Bridge.

 

Ikkyu

wikkyu

 

In order to deepen his Zen understanding, Daito Kokushi (also known as Shuho Myocho, 1281-1338), the founder of Daitoku-ji, passed a number of years hiding out among the beggars clustered about Kyoto’s Gojo Bridge.

not inhibited from acting

brice portolano

 

Frankly speaking,

you simply must manage

to keep concentrating even in the midst

of clamor and tumult, acting as though there were not

a single thing happening, penetrating all the way through from

the heights to the depths. You must become perfectly complete,

without any shapes or forms at all, without wasting effort,

yet not inhibited from acting. Whether you speak

or stay silent, whether you get up

or lie down, it is never

anyone else.

 

Yuanwu

zen letters

 

complete and perfect of itself

studying texts and stiff meditation

 

Some people,

not knowing the essential emptiness

of good and evil, think practical cultivation of mind

means to sit rigidly immobile, subduing mind

and body, like a rock placed on

top of grass.

 

This is ludicrous.

That is why it is said that followers

cut off confusion in every state of mind,

yet the mind that does the cutting

off is a brigand.

 

…People who practice

the Way should not seek externally.

The essence of mind has no defilement; it is originally

complete and perfect of itself. Just detach from

illusory objects, and it is enlightened

to suchness as is.

 

Chinul

tracing back the radiance